They Are Coming for Your Birth Control: Cuccinelli Supports Civil Disobedience as Method of Flouting Birth Control Benefit

Note: Think that anti-choice politicians and activists aren’t trying to outlaw contraception? Think again. Follow along in an ongoing series that proves beyond a doubt that they really are coming for your birth control.

Dr. Martin Luther King went to jail to protest segregation. Gandhi went on hunger strikes to fight colonial rule. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli thinks going to jail to avoid offering health insurance that covers emergency contraception is just as worthwhile.

You know, Abraham Lincoln has many good quotes, but one of them is ‘the best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it vigorously.’ And here we’re going to have an example of what tyranny means when it’s played to its logical conclusion,” Cuccinelli said. “Because forcing business owners and businesses to do this is not consistent with our history of preserving religious liberty, one of the most important protections we have in this country.”

Cuccinelli recounted an exchange with his own bishop in which he counseled the cleric to embrace civil disobedience: “My local bishop said, ‘Well, you know I told a group I’m ready to go to jail.’ And I said, ‘Bishop, don’t take this personally: You need to go to jail.’”

“What I mean by that is, people need to see it play out all the way to its logical conclusion,” Cuccinelli said.

Cuccinelli isn’t the only one advocating civil disobedience rather than allowing women access to pills that will delay ovulate and prevent an unwanted pregnancy after unprotected sex. In fact, he’s just echoing the recent claim of Father Frank Pavone that, had his own suit not succeeded, he would have been willing to endure jail time himself.

“We were prepared to violate the mandate on Jan. 1, at great expense to our organization,” Pavone wrote on his website. “We are very grateful to the court that we did not have to take that step, and we remain confident that this unjust mandate will be entirely and permanently struck down.”

Pavone was willing to pay costly fines, much like craft store chain Hobby Lobby said it would be. Now, however, Hobby Lobby says it will delay the start date of its insurance coverage to avoid penalties (a decision that has changed now that they already reaped the benefits from a “support Hobby Lobby” buying spree).

Cuccinelli’s “go to jail” comments are just the latest in public statements created to incite the religious right, and it’s not going unnoticed. However, it’s former Congressman Joe Walsh who is taking that challenge and fanning the flames even harder. Newsmax writes, “The Republican firebrand said conservatives may have to ‘defy and or break the law and engage in civil disobedience’ to make a point. But he also paraphrased Thomas Jefferson, saying: ‘We may have to shed blood every couple hundred years to preserve our freedoms.'”

Are Cuccinelli and Walsh ratcheting up the rhetoric in an already heated battle? Maybe. Or maybe they are just showing the mainstream media what they are already saying in private in their own outlets, such as when legal analyst Ken Kuklowski wrote:

This is civil disobedience, consistent with America’s highest traditions when moral issues are at stake. The Greens are a law-abiding family. They have no desire to defy their own government. But as the Founders launched the American Revolution because they believed the British government was violating their rights, the Greens believe that President Barack Obama and Secretary Kathleen Sebelius are commanding the Greens to sin against God, and that no government has the lawful authority to do so.

The Christian tradition of defying government commands to do something wrong goes back to the very birth of Christianity. When the apostles were ordered not to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with anyone, the Book of Acts records: “Peter and the other apostles replied: ‘We must obey God rather than men! The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead—whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree.’”

Eleven of the twelve apostles—including Peter—would lose their lives for the sake of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ; only the apostle John died of old age. They were determined to obey God’s will at all costs.

…

Millions of Christians across the country feel exactly the same way as the Greens. The Obama administration has issued a statist command that is a declaration of war on people of faith who object to abortion, and civil disobedience could break out all over the country unless the courts set this matter right—and quickly.

Are we really going to “shed blood” to stop access to no co-pay emergency contraception? I guess it’s give me liberty or give me ella, because they are obviously coming for your birth control.